The Inauguration

As posted to my FB page

Thoughts on the morning of: I am somehow reminded of a sunny January day when the Challenger exploded on live TV. Today it is what is in our heads that will have us glued to the TV. May it be uneventful in the nicest ways. May we be a governable people. May the peaceful transfre of power remain the organizing principle of this country. For it is a beautiful thing. I never fully appreciated this before. 

My Morning After review: I didn’t expect to be so moved by THE INAUGURATION. The joys, the firsts, the brilliant colors all chiefly brought onto the stage by women. It was that final scene in a tense suspenseful movie when those in hiding can come out again into the sunshine. But there was no director artfully manipulating this storytelling. It was ritual that held it together. And in the making of this event each person makes their own decision as to what to bring to it. From my personal favorite, Lady Gaga in her inverted Vulva skirt so large and so red (so as to be seen from the eye of a satellite) belting out the anthem on her own personal gold microphone to the poised and petite powerhouse of a young poet in a bright yellow coat rapping the nation into participatory attention to this thing called democracy. Words to march by.

“If only we’re brave enough to see it

If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

My eyes followed Kamala Harris stepping out in her Shirley Chisholm purple, her pearls and her spike heels with her protector husband standing in ritual on the Capital steps to see her predecessor out. Pence giving us that grace just by attending where the Other would not. And so we had our moment of knowing what it looks like when a woman stands at the helm. A preview. 

And I stayed too to watch the new President and his Dr. First Lady leave in the protector vehicle and then get out and walk all the way to the White House. She again in spiked heels. So much more are the details by which women will be judged. But it is now by with style that ritual is enacted.

And then almost a throwaway moment as Kamala walks up to the White House and returns the salute of the military officer with the many gold braids adorning his coat. Salutes not in submission, but as second in command and as a woman. That’s not something we’ve seen before.

President Jo Biden gave a speech I actually listened to, so compelling was the reality he actually addressed. And then we had a much deserved party of high caliber entertainers all across the nation and a fireworks display that pulled out all the stops. I had no idea what a patriot I was to find this all so gratifying.

But I will offer a recent story. Last year in Thailand at a farming conference attended by a handful of nations I was the sole representative of the U.S. which prompted the presence of our flag on the stage with the five other nations. And we were told that on the final day we would be asked to sing a song of our country. I would have to sing it solo in English, the language everyone would understand. When I thought of the song I would sing I was so choked up by it I near burst into tears in a field of cabbages. So when the microphone was passed around on the shuttle home on the last day I belted out in my best high school musical style the song that had welcomed me to these shores in 5th grade in 1968. 

“This land is your land and this land is my land

From California to the New York Islands

From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.”

Normally I Woudn't Be Here

In which I question call out culture, extremist activism, LGBTQ splintering and perspectives in an opinion centered culture vs a non-confrontational collectivist one.

I would normally right now be overseas in Thailand enjoying being pampered by my cook and traveling to my farm with Clasina. Or alternately traveling to my other home of origin the UK. My devising to be overseas every six months began in earnest during the Trump era. This has proven to be an excellent strategy for saving my mental health. 

Thai culture being a collectivist culture doesn't burden the individual with the need to move daily through a barrage of opinions. I once joked to a Thai friend that for every American who believes they can change the world this instant by delivering an opinion there needs to be at least a hundred Thais in agreement just to begin a discussion on a topic. This expressed equally our frustration with both Thai and American culture.

While in Thailand any actual requirement of me to express myself is so reduced that my stress level comes down to a soothing slowness that gives me a sense of timelessness and spaciousness. It also gave me the clarity of mind to look back at American culture through Facebook and sharply see the biases at play there. 

When people ask me how I stay so thin I tell them it is because my brain uses up so much fuel just trying to deconstruct my life given all I have to process making sense of it as an American of multiple perspectives.

Lockdown Retreat

Luckily I had the best of all possible lockdowns mostly alone which gave me a lot of space in isolation in my tiny house with lots to do putting in a garden and adding new dimensions to my off grid life. I kept expecting long tracts of boredom which never appeared. I was kept so busy reading the news. And I had two classes to attend on Zoom for which I installed a hanging chair. One class is called The Fool’s Journey, a year long exploration into the Western mystery school tradition using the Tarot deck designed by my teacher Pamela Eakins. I spent a lot of my shamanic journeys for the class hugging my two spirit guides and holding hands with them to fill the void left by all the social distancing. This  felt so real to me I could feel my heart opening to receive their love.

The second class was also taught by Pamela and that was a women’s writing class. We had been meeting for several years at her comfortable home on the coast and now on Zoom in the strange prison of our individual cells we spent that first meeting voicing our fears and wondering if anything we had been writing had any relevancy at all. Pamela with her usual stroke of inspiration had us sit down and write whatever we had to say about the pandemic. The pieces were so full of energy she decided we were to do a book and invited more women writers on her list to contribute. The poems and essays came in so fast that Pamela was soon able to produce our finished book. Called  Pandemic Carona: Poems of Shock, Fear, Realization and Metamorphis by the Sisters of the Holy Pen which you can now order on Amazon.

This project saved our sanity and gave us purpose. And most important it kept us writing and I was able to regain my sense of relevance. The book itself is a diverse collection of voices some intentionally ordinary and full of love, some brilliant at times profound. It is a capture of the arc of this pandemic and its impact on us collectively. We did a book reading this week on zoom for 29 of the writers hosted by Bookwoman an independent bookstore in Austin Texas attended by some 70 people. The reading a performance that was part ceremonial, part intimate revelation. It was recorded so you can soon enjoy it at your leisure. 

Nevertheless as we approached June I had been alone so long I started to feel the edges of the abyss, the sense that if I didn’t work at holding it altogether I would unravel into some sort of crazy fractured despair. I was no longer as captivated by the discoveries of the evolving virus and the shenanigans of the current administration threatening to collapse our country. I kept in mind an astrological interpretation of 2020 which described a year of turmoil as long held assumptions and structures were challenged, but clarity would come sometime in December it promised. As I wondered how this turmoil would manifest George Floyd was killed and society broke open with rallies led by Black Lives Matter. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. If this was the turmoil we needed to process (yet again) we could do this. Race was something every American had to address in some fashion and had a handle on though likely not the same handle, but at least a perspective from which to begin. In short order just about all the books on the New York Times bestseller list was about race. I was touched by the interest my white women colleagues showed in rolling up their sleeves to get a grip on white fragility and structural racism so that a solution might be found and applied. I also came to understand through Black activist contacts that white women were far from considered trustworthy (largely because of their role in lynching history and now as Karens) and had to work super hard to offset this distrust. I came to the conclusion that only with a Black woman in leadership would we regain any sort of feminist credibility. (Go Kamala Harris.)

I listened to podcast discussions of American History including the 1619 project and a much more comprehensive series of podcasts called “Seeing White” and “The Land That Never Has Been Yet”. This last title a quote from Langston Hughes. 

Seeing American history through the eyes of slavery and the cruel brand of capitalism that evolved from it along with the associated societal disdain for the poor was a perspective that actually made me feel better about the current administration. When Trump was first elected I felt that the GOP had pulled off a coup which was an alarming concept even for a Thai. But from this historical perspective I saw that the U.S. had all along contained this element of bias for wealthy white men and Darwinistic cruelty for those who couldn’t cut it in this supposed land of opportunity. This made me feel that the core of this country was still stable in nature; it had just been backsliding rather terrifyingly.

It allowed me to see that those who managed to succeed at all in such a country were heroic. This was a helpful concept. It reminded me of the Buddhist teaching that all life is suffering. So we were doing well if we managed not to suffer. 

Out Onto The Streets

I attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Redwood City which happened early on while we were still in quarantine and was well attended. I was pleased to see the large presence of white people and subsequent rallies through the largely white towns of Woodside, Half Moon Bay, Palo Alto and Menlo Park. In Menlo Park I attended the LGBTQ+Black Lives Matter rally held on the anniversary of Stonewall. I pulled out my vintage “Queer N’Asian” t-shirt and made myself a little Black Lives Matter sign. The t-shirt gave me claim to being a part of queer history. I hadn’t felt such a sense of belonging in a long time especially as a woman of color and now as an elder asking the young women if I could photograph them.

Having given my time to Black Lives Matter I reserved a little space to present my own cause by presenting myself as a butch lesbian in a post on Facebook. Most Americans don’t read me as butch because I am Asian and have kept my hair long. And Asian women are so highly fetishized as sexual creatures that they are seen as a dish for men (and thus assumed to be straight and femme). So in order to counter act these assumptions I posted a picture of myself wearing my Fruit of the Loom tighty whities. This classic garment being the only male garment not appropriated by women so could still truly be said to be cross dressing. I paired it with a wife beater tank top and photographed myself from overhead while lounging on my bed in classic pseudo pin-up fashion. It got my point across. See it here. 

I wouldn’t have to do this in Thailand where I am read as a Tom the slang term for masculine presenting women. Tom is short for tomboy and also means lesbian. I was assured of this presentation by my housekeeper when I mentioned to her that I was going to lunch with my Tom friend. 

“Are you a Tom too,” she asked.

 “A little bit,” I said. 

“More than a little bit,” she responded. I smiled broadly pleased at this reading. That was another perk ofbeing in Thailand. I am seen for who I am. And the visibility of other butch lesbians in Bangkok is prevalent. 

I was making myself visible to my Western audience in order to maintain this aspect of lesbian culture especially in these times of makeover by the transgender movement. 

Thai people already understand what a transgender person is. There is the term katoey used to identify those (mostly men) who are cross dressing and presenting as women. They do not hold the same status as women, but they have a place in society that goes back through history. Most Asian societies have this category in their lexicon. Similar to Native American society under the name Two Spirit.

It was because of the term katoey that I knew I would have a place in Thai society. The explanation for this transgender presentation is explained as most things in Thailand are by the concept of karma and reincarnation. I was told that I still carried the spirit of a boy implying that I had been a man in my last life. The idea that transgender people are persons who are trapped in the wrong body would seem beside the point to a Thai. The whole point of incarnating is to work through your stuff where you now find yourself which is as a man or a woman. Though Thailand being the sex change capital of the world is eager to accommodate those who wish sex reassignment surgery. Because if you can have it why not? The Thais are as much about acquisition as any consumer society.

Given this reincarnation karma story you would likely call this a religious ideology and I’m fine with that. But by the same token I can also claim that the idea of a person being trapped in the wrong body is an ideology. One that is being enabled by the “new” science of gender. Such science has proven that those who are transgender have the brain of the sex they identify with. Society needs science to prove such things because of the logic of American civil rights. For in order to legislate protection for those who face prejudice from others who would enact violence or bias against us it is best that such characteristics be determined to be immutable. 

In other words it’s not a choice or a psychological aberration. Because after all we are a self flagellating moral society and if it were a choice or a psychological aberration we would be obliged to fix it to conform to societal mores. And if science says you were born in the wrong body then by all means let us alleviate the stress of this suffering preferably wth medical intervention as we do every other condition in this over-medicalized society so we can make some money off it and contribute to the GNP.

The ideology of karma makes for better stories about past lives which includes historical circumstances and some artistic nuances in the telling. A psychic is the professional you would call to help you see into this past. But mostly we just shrug and leave it to the mystery of not knowing. Remember mystery? That element of awe and how to live with what you cannot know with a hope for the poetic justice of karma in the end.

Cancel Me This

An opinion in Thailand does not require a response. To object to it would be to seek conflict which would cause suffering and that would just not be a good practice of Buddhism—to intentionally cause more suffering. But here in the West we have elevated an opinion to such a point that people are publicly reviled, lose their jobs and their reputations while attempts are made to prevent them from speaking further. 

I read a few analysis to understand this phenomena. Call-out culture I learned was largely due to Twitter empowering those who usually don’t have a podium. From the perspective of the status quo it was mob rule. And this technology had empowered young people, African Americans and Trans Activists one article stated. I remember being young and gay recklessly making declarations and refusing to trust anyone over 30. The second category wasn’t surprising given the history of this country. But this final category; how did this tiny .01% minority become so virulent?

The best way to explain this last category is through the shallow lens of American pop culture. You will no doubt remember that five years ago Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner in a manner so public it put the whole trans story into the public eye and explained the idea of a man trapped in a women’s body. And because Jenner had access to not only the finest plastic surgery that money can buy but the glamour arm of Hollywood the results were absolutely spectacular. Americans love a story of transformation and glamour and ate it up. The story might have ended there, but for the political aspects of the trans movement and the ongoing violence enacted on transgender people. This violence targeted at any gender nonconforming, cross dressing individual, but because of the popularity of the transgender story it became mainly about transgender individuals. And how to protect those individuals.

Both the United States and the UK took steps to protect transgender people basically by inserting the word gender into all the discrimination clauses where the word sex had originally been inserted to legislate equality between the sexes i.e. men and women. This change had an impact on the protected class of women. But before we could even get a grip on what this might mean cancel culture determined that anything that was not pro trans was bad whether it had an impact on natal born women or not. And that’s how J.K. Rowling became the poster child of transphobia. And by trouncing the writer of this most popular children’s book series of all times every liberal straight person could now virtue signal their support for the T in the LGBTQ alphabet without even fully understanding what any of it meant. And trans activist could use the headlines trouncing the author for being a transphobe to further present all the pro trans ideology as established fact (to fill the vacuum of this absence of understanding). 

When I read these articles I was struck by the calm matter of fact language used to establish an authority that was not to be denied with links thrown in liberally to “prove” that these facts were not to be contested. And when I followed the links  I found more of the same style of language interpreting science based research that basically came down to opinions rooted in an authority that was backed up by nothing more than the lived experience of a trans woman. 

This illusion of authority was so complete that it took me a few minutes to realize that we were allowing a person who transitioned as an adult and had no actual lived experience as a girl to comment on both the lives of young girls and how their social lives operated. And that I in fact had more authority having come out much earlier than my peers in the context of an all girls school. A school that came to be known in the psychiatric community as the hotbed of eating disorders and other self harming practices due largely to the incredibly high expectations placed on girls being groomed to leadership as stated by the school mantra or at the very least the trophy wives of the rich given the demographic.

It is in the arena of high school that trans ideology is having its biggest impact and had come to the attention of research scientists given that the number of teenage girls seeking sex reassignment surgery had shot up by 4,400%. Seventy times what it had been before which was so negligible that it couldn’t even really be counted. Before 2016 the number of gender dysphoric kids had been predominantly pre-school age boys. 

The moment the first research study was published it was debunked and cancel cultured into disgrace by trans activists. But the researcher prevailed, apologized for any offense taken and successfully republished the paper with just a few clarifications on methodology. But further research has been stymied and gone underground. Nobody wants death threats just for doing their job. But a brave journalist did publish a book on the phenomena of this trans contagion among girls which I have duly read and reviewed here. It’s a compelling read of sociological significance.

Meanwhile almost no girls seemed to be identifying as lesbians anymore. Lots of lesbians in my age group wanted to be boys as children including me (and we are all glad we remained women). So what was going on during an era that is supposedly so gay positive. Or was it?

Gay Liberation No More

When I came into the movement post Stonewall it was determined that to be accepted by the public we needed to present ourselves as ordinary people. Ordinary in the sense of being just like anybody else, wanting to live quietly with our chosen partners, get married and have a family. This line of thinking required the right optics i.e. that we also look and act like straight people and basically keep our fabulousness off the streets and safely cordoned off to the night club act and movies as entertainment for y’all. In the process of this assimilationist strategy we threw all the gender non-conforming and poly pansexuals and what all under the bus. And that naked man with the boa constrictor who appeared in all the San Francisco Pride parades at the time.

Liberals embraced gay marriage as their virtue signaling token issue and haters targeted gay youth and gender non-conforming individuals. To assuage this wrong and the accompanying guilt of the assimilationist strategy the movement now feels that the time has come for the T in LGBTQ to be the focus of the times. And that California schools are to be apprised of all the various flavors of our rainbow down to our many sexual preferences and gender non-confirming presentations including the whole brain in wrong body thing to prevent further bullying of our people. As a result or maybe as a clever workaround to the ordinary vanilla male and female stereotypes being described in the process the number of those identifying as non-binary entering college has shot up along with the incidences of transitioning. While the number of out gay youth seem to be disappearing per the observations of my peers. Homophobia was clearly still at large.

Last year to get a feel for this transgender era I took myself to the Trans March the weekend of Pride. I immediately noticed all the Toms—the Asian girls presenting as butch, arm in arm with their femme counterparts. And I was delighted to see Latina Toms too. I also photographed the proud shirtless transman showing off his bare flat chests for us. There were what I used to think of as drag queens—gay men with more style than could be contained in one gender to paraphrase a drag queen movie of the ‘90s. One in a wonder woman outfit. And lots with a more vintage slightly dowdy style I used to recognize as transvestites—straight men who like to dress as women (and were observed by gender scientists to be sexually aroused by this, but this autogynephelia is now considered a transphobic concept). There were also young children identifying as trans accompanied by their entire family. And a dour androgynous woman holding a flag I didn’t recognize striped in olive white and violet. It was the “gender queer” flag I was told upon inquiry with some annoyance. My favorite flag was a transgender flag with the words Trans Queer Witches Against Fascism scribed across it with a drawn glyph of pagan and gender symbols. Standing next to the flag was what I used to recognize as a lesbian with the fade haircut now popular with butch lesbians. On their shirt a button proclaiming the pronoun “he”. My photographs organized for you here. 

The takeaway of my foray into this brave new queer world was that it was so splintered into factions that nobody would look anyone in the eye let alone smile. So much depended now on defending one’s identity. Because apparently it wouldn’t be apparent otherwise. The chalked messages on the sidewalk gave me a clue of the underlying pain. “I Am Trans Enough” and “Let People Be Themselves”. I realized that this movement both included me as an Asian Tom and rejected me as an American lesbian. It also empowered me to defend myself.

The very definition of lesbian being oriented around being a woman and being attracted to women seems to defy the very existence of trans women whose vocal activists have mounted such an aggressive public attack on women who don’t want to sleep with persons who have penises that they sound exactly like men who tell lesbians they haven’t met the right man yet. (Not all trans people have genital surgery so they are stuck with the equipment they were born with as it shrinks or enlarges in response to the hormones they are taking.) No comparable attack seems to be aimed at straight women. Maybe their appetite for penises is too intimidating. heh. Plenty divorced their husbands who wanted them to be lesbians to support their late blooming transgender lives.

Meanwhile online lesbian-only space has been completely excommunicated from social media platforms. Even the ever tolerant kink community can no longer allow their members to express their particular preferences if it involves only natal born women. I have though found an online group that regularly shows me photos of cross dressing lesbians hosted by a clothing company offering clothes for women affecting masculine style. This fashion group called Butch Fashion, Style & Care was the perfect cover for natal born women only. Fashion serving as a cover for a persecuted minority. I was able to post my lesbian stories and photos there and occasionally others would discuss the pros and cons of taking T (male hormones) or the best brand of binders to compress their chests into a male appearance. All closely moderated to stop any fights.

The trans identity has benefited the community greatly to be sure; it created a political category for gender non-conforming people and thanks to recent Supreme Court ruling this category is now to be protected from job discrimination. This was huge in my mind because it finally allowed all cross dressing persons to have a place in American society. 

I do not however think it a good thing that people are being punished and prevented from simply stating a preference for natal born women. Being able to state our sexual preferences was the main point of the gay movement. Not to allow this is homophobic. But now the bigger activist epithet is that I am being transphobic. Well have at it then. I’ve devoted my entire life to being free to express myself without fear of reprisal either from losing my job or by besmirching my reputation only now to have my voice canceled by my own tribe. 

A society that cancels what people can say so punishingly is practicing a self imposed totalitarianism. It is a mob rule that is stoked for revolution, but has no skill set for the long slow work of diplomacy and coalition building. It is adolescent and punch drunk from unaccustomed power. Reminding me of revolutions that having thrown over a society devolve into corrupt governments with little vision.

I have a long memory going back to a time that strived for freedom of expression and a live and let live openness to differences. One that allowed a certain curiosity to ask questions and a diplomacy in answering those questions. My values didn’t change; the world around me changed and my language dates me. I now regard anyone under 35 with suspicion. I feel like an old crank spouting insults.

American culture as many have pointed out denigrates and mothballs their elders. Another perk of going to Thailand was that my status as an elder gave me a reverence that was palpable in the sky train station as I pulled out my senior card. It made me feel seen and respected.

Now I am trapped here in this ridiculously shallow, polarized society that has so politicized everything that even wearing a mask in a health crisis is a political statement. But with little to lose I realized that I could afford to speak for the unfavorable positions as I saw them.

I have long been of crone age, but maybe curmudgeon would be a better fit. heh.

The Biden Factor

On Wednesday in the aftermath of Super Tuesday I posted this to my Facebook feed. I leave it here to mark my journey and my thoughts during these interesting times. 

This article by a Black man covering justice issues for The Nation (a progressive weekly magazine) spoke to me of what it means to know your status and place in a society where “white will white”. It is a survival strategy born of long experience. It showed me how much privilege we stand on—we who would dream big and presume to change something as big as our government. 

There were some in my feed (of liberals) who sincerely think Bernie is the worse kind of change they can imagine; the people who are invested in the veracity of the establishment (and its wisdom of incremental change), but it is clear now that what most drove the wins for Biden was fear. A similar fear to knowing your place in the world and who actually runs things. It is the belief that we must join with those who run things in order to be safe from another term of Trump. This fear far out weighed the desire for good beneficial change. 

I was also struck by an underlying internalized doubt or out and out belief on the part of women that a woman isn’t really good enough. I voted for Elizabeth Warren even though I believed that this country would be too misogynistic to allow a woman to be president. I wanted the nation to hear what she had to say for as long as possible. (Bernie was not articulate enough for me though he had my vote last time.) I am also heartened that she is doing as well as she is. It speaks to how much a smart effective woman is already able to be heard despite the establishment media being determined to ignore her or give her credit. And this race is not over yet.

America has not yet dialed in what will be the enormous economic impact of the coronavirus. It is only just beginning to realize what the impact of base stupidity in a leader will have on the country when it comes to coping with the reality of people dying of such an uncontrollable contagion. A story that will fuel the media news even more than the shenanigans of Trump did during his rise (that helped bring him to power). When it becomes clear how dangerous such stupidity is in a leader I think we will see a shift from the fear of a Trump reelection to the realization that his reelection will be near impossible.


8:30 am. update: Goodbye Elizabeth fierce defender of the people. May all that you have seeded by speaking with such intelligence, compassion and courage go forth and birth a nation with a thousand plans implemented in all the hopeful hamlets of its progressive reach. For now we are a nation who know what it is indeed possible to do. xoxo

May You Live In Interesting Times

Not wishing to appear oblivious to the concerns of the coronavirus that has interwoven our global lives and been present in every country I walked upon, I start here at the intersection of my personal journey and the news of the day as it rose to meet me. Not to mention the political climate here in the States that has everyone abuzz with passionate intensity. It is indeed interesting times.

Keep Calm And Carry On

“Will you be getting any more masks?” I asked the Asian cashier at Walgreens already wearing a mask, “I’m going to Thailand next week and my relatives want me to bring some.”

“You might want to cancel your trip,” he said.

“I went to Asia during Bird Flu and SARS and I’m going to go now,” I said getting annoyed. “It’s only a 2% death rate,” It was late January and Santa Clara had just reported the first local case of 3 in the U.S. Thailand had 17 cases.

He told me a shipment was due in at 5 a.m. the next day and I should come early if I wanted a box. I did not wish to trouble myself for something so useless and was immediately annoyed at the level of panic the thought of this new pandemic was stirring. 

“Masks are useless anyway,” I told the clerk and stormed out. 

I was so mad I had to get a grip before I insulted more people after another relative messaged me to bring her a  box of 100 count 3M model 9001v masks. Such a specific request made it sound like a status item. They were nicely designed paper masks with valves. The price was rising as I searched for them online. I didn't order them as they were delayed in shipping and wouldn’t arrive in time. She expressed emoji despair and I expressed anger at her hanging her hopes on masks.

I knew my best remedy was to respond in my own way with a public post all my Thai contacts could see. I planned a satirical piece on protective gear to post to Facebook. This required that I make another visit to Walgreens the next day to buy white cotton wound care gloves and a stop at Pet Smart to buy a cone of shame (to keep the wearer from touching their face). I was very pleased to see it came in 3 fashionable shades of transparent plastic and chose the fuchsia in a medium dog size. It took me another day to take pictures and write my post which I presented at dinner time just as my Thai contacts were at breakfast. My "Dear Thailand" letter had my American friends rolling on the floor while my Thai friends acknowledged my polite assessment of their arising situation as a gesture of caring. 

Well done I thought as the fine line between gentle parody and insult across cultural boundaries was one of my biggest ongoing challenges.

I had booked my ticket four months before my trip and had gotten a decent price on my favorite airline; the one with the best food and a terrific offering of entertainment options in movies from all over the world. It routed through Taipei. I had in the past booked with the cheap Chinese airlines that had me layover in Guangzhou for hours so I was relieved that I had steered clear of those flights. They were likely cancelled now. 

My second clue that this story was going to be an international one was how quiet SFO was the night I left on February 4th. The line at baggage check was a shadow of the usual frenetic activity of Asian people struggling with oversize cardboard boxes and giant suitcases in their attempt to bring home all the tariff free goodies from the States. Security check was such a dream I forgot to collect my laptop and rushed back an hour later to get it. While trying to prove to the security foreman that it was indeed my laptop I showed him the picture of me dressed in a white hazmat suit striking a heroic pose with one foot on my duffel bag. He looked at me skeptically. He asked for something with my name on it. Luckily I found a downloaded copy of last years tax return.

Crowds keep me focused when traveling I realized and made a note to double check myself in this disorienting new environment of emptiness. It had its perks. I had a whole row of seats to myself on both flights. Taipei too was quiet with masked travelers who wore their masks quite carelessly I noted while I had winter gloves on and was became hyper aware of how much I was wanting to touch my face. But it was the emptiness of the Bangkok airport that shocked me most as I entered the huge hall for passport control. I snuck a picture of it during my short five minute wait for what would normally take over an hour to get through. Every Thai looking at that picture had the same thought. We are in for an economic meltdown (given the tourist industry that drives Thai economy). All tours from China had been stopped though individuals were still allowed in. 

My girl cousin was on time to pick me up in her family size luxury SUV. She did not have a mask on. I asked her how she felt about the Wuhun virus. 

“I don’t look at the news”, she said, “it has made me much happier”. 

“Good for you,” I said. Being a mother of two preteen boys was challenging enough without adding to their lives the burden of the world filtered through an anxious mother. 

“Do you have masks?” I asked. 

“We still have them from the last time,” she said referring to SARS and bird flu. No worries then for the wealthy. She more wanted to share with me her latest alternative health exploration and gave me her much rumpled copy of The Emotion Code. I handed over to her (once we arrived at my family compound) the magnetic bracelets she had mail ordered to my California address for me to bring. Magnets are the tool of choice for releasing stuck emotion according to this healing practice which used muscle testing to find the stuck emotion. I was intrigued.

I also had for her a fishing vest for her eldest boy who had taken up skeet shooting. A development I found intriguing and creative for a boy who has no unscheduled time at all in this world where free play is an antiquated notion. Skeet shooting was offered in Bangkok in a controlled indoor environment park-like setting. All of middle and upper middle class Bangkok conduct their lives in indoor environments. That is how one lives in a city where the air quality is constantly in the red zone of unhealthy. This was what enraged me about the panic around masks. It was for the wrong reasons I wanted to shout. 

I had myself become an aficionado of non-disposable masks and had invested quite a bit of money into finding the best fitting, vented mask with replaceable 99micron filter (available in a wide array of fashionable colors and prints) designed by a contractor. These had become my most prized gear for woodworking sawdust, California fires and the smoke of the burning season in Asia known as PM 2.5 (parts per million sized at 2.5 microns).

I duly checked that everyone on our household staff had masks. In Prayoon’s kitchen where I took my meals I saw a good quality 3M one in a storage box. No one was wearing them at home, but they had them for going out. Online my contacts were posting every update on the virus and China’s response including a video showing officials apparently shooting a man trying to escape the lockdown city. 

Commuters on the BTS (Bangkok Transit System) were almost all wearing masks and I learned from a post by an expat culture watcher that there was a social context for masks. In Europe only those who are sick wear masks to protect others. In Asia masks are worn as an act of communal cooperation and solidarity (and because the government was telling them to). I read more discussion online about why masks don’t help.

While traveling on the BTS with a mask wearing cousin (the one who wanted the 3M box of 100 count 9001v), I sneezed (due to change in air pressure) and she urged me to put my mask on. She was a doctor’s wife and was wearing the usual pleated ear loop masks so I put on mine and she took a picture of us together to post to FB urging people to be safe for both virus and PM 2.5. Killing two birds with one stone and appeasing both our mask agendas.

Prayoon’s daughter Aun ever entrepreneurial was looking at home sewing masks to sell. At night they watched the news which would calmly update the number of cases along with instructions about washing hands, not sharing utensils when eating and using hand sanitizer now available at entrances to stores and just about everywhere including the subway stations. The news is controlled by the military government so was designed to keep everyone calm and informed. No amped up CNN style coverage here to instigate chaos and possible political unrest. There was good news too. On February 3rd Thai doctors successfully treated a Chinese patient in critical condition with a cocktail of HIV and flu meds. She recovered and was delisted as having the virus. 

This news was not part of your CNN coverage. One might well wonder why. Clearly the panic element of the news cycle had far to go to keep eyeballs. A cure would dampen this interest. And besides it wasn’t a white first world male doctor who came up with this treatment so was hardly viable. The best mention was a generic “some are trying various meds, but nothing has been corroborated”. I had blamed todays increased fear factor on social media, but it was more the fault of CNN that 24/7 pipeline in constant need of news fuel with which to douse the public with whatever would keep their attention and fear was the most addictive elixer. (CNN coming on line in the late ‘80s was when parents started to put their kids on house arrest due to all the child abduction stories. We are just now beginning to come back from that with the “free range” child movement having to legislate the right to allow children to walk the streets without getting arrested.)

At the train station in Chiangmai arriving passengers on the sleeper train frequented by foreigners were greeted with welcoming smiles and hand sanitizer dispensing nurses, an infrared camera and a doctor. Once in the country side there were no masks at all. Time had stood still there. We went about our business. (Much to report in my next post on my adventures learning about a probiotic technology from Japan and what a game changer it is for animal husbandry, farming and garbage collecting.) Two weeks passed and I was once again back at the near empty airport. It was eery. The hugeness of this shopping mall airport empty on a Friday afternoon. It felt like there had been a die off. Would this be the end of globalization I wondered? Perhaps all that frenetic travel before the virus was quite unnecessary. And we could finally transform to a localized economy. I could get used to this I thought.

May You Live In Interesting Times

Upon entering the U.S. there were so few returning residents that they switched us to the visitors side as a long line of travelers from Taiwan awaited processing on the other. Why would they want to visit Trump’s anti-foreigner, anti-everyone America I wondered? I guess they got tired of wearing masks. Heh. We had all been screened at every airport with infrared cameras before boarding (to spot a fever). It would be the only reassurance I could offer to my State side family that I had not brought back the dreaded bug.

The customs officer questioned me sternly about what I was doing on my trip and what I brought back. Air freshener and kitchen utensils I said. I forgot about the 3 bags of shrimp and chili flavored Lays potato chips. I didn’t want to mention my rattles because they had seeds in them. He let me pass.

The America I returned to had shifted noticeably into a mood I hadn’t experienced—ever. A sort of collective holding of its breath as though awaiting disaster yet the weather was lovely. The streets seemed noticeably light in traffic, but the conversations both in person and online was a chaotic, noisy battle of wills. I was back to being mad again. Mad at the panic after traveling through the relatively calm territory of a people living with the epidemic. Mad at the political wrestling of the primaries and the arising horror of the “liberal” media to the specter of Bernie Sanders. The chaos of it made me wish to dispense with democracy altogether. Here in the land of “make your own reality” the battle was on for control as pundits tried desperately to mitigate the horror of an old man who represented so much change to a society so invested in incremental baby steps. Yet completely ignored the one woman who was speaking sense. I’d come home to vote for Elizabeth of the House of Warren, mother of dragons flaming Bloomberg right off his golden perch. 

My flashes of insight informed by having just returned from a country whose democracy had gone terribly wrong yet was still quite functional informed my commentary. I wondered if Americans would learn quickly enough how to handle the unrest I saw waiting to erupt. Democracy requires much of its constituents and there had always been smart, well informed politically savvy people who saw clearly what was happening, but the narrative would have to be well enough understood by those who were only reasonably and superficially informed. But here was a new challenge—the people I was used to taking my cues from—the informed classes of older white liberals who had always called the shots for us in the media and in our local leadership appeared to have overslept and missed the movement I’d been a part of and had been watching since the last election. It gave me the worse case of culture shock. I sharpened my pen on Facebook on every platform offered. Some would hear me and be so shocked it shut them up. Some in turn wanted to shout me down. I took solace in political satire—the territory of subversive, veiled opinions. It was best not to get too invested. And hold open for what could still arise in the unexpected—what unnoticed pangolin might MacGuffin us right off our righteous perches. The Black Swan of our time. Anything could happen.

As a writer the famous Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” is my version of “surf’s up” in my taste for adventure. Though I now felt that real change (in terms of how we choose to live preferably sustainably and in harmony with the earth) was coming from outside the U.S. this is where I’m planted and by rights should bloom and have bloomed. I would be a witness either to its continuing collapse or to its passage through. 

Meanwhile I checked online for cheap tickets to elsewhere. Those empty airports had been a tonic. And this was after all a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the world without either Americans or Chinese. Two classes of tourists so huge that without them the world would be empty and left to its own self. How cool was that? Perfectly normal things could happen.